


Sight

by seventhe



Category: Final Fantasy II
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Hilda/Minwu (implied), gratuitous use of imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:32:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/seventhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minwu sees things; when he looks at one thing, he sees another, and he has his whole life. But when he looks at Fynn Castle, he sees only its stones; when he looks at Princess Hilda, he doesn't know what he sees.</p><p>The story of how Minwu came to serve Hilda, and how they came to trust one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Estirose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/gifts).



> Prompt: _I'd love to see something about Minwu and Hilda. What were things like before the game started? Hilda seems to trust Minwu, after all._

 

 

 

Minwu sees things. When he looks at one thing, he sees another, half before him and half in his mind's-eye. As a young child he barely realizes it, because he thinks it happens to everyone; then when he learns it does not, he assumes it happens to all _mages_ , because his magic has been with him as long as the visions have.

His mother Maeda is a black mage, whose specialty is the bright burning flame; his father Ymer is a white mage known more for his speed than his strength, always the first to respond in a time of crisis. Minwu's powers are both of theirs and yet neither. He looks in the mirror once and sees a phoenix, fire and ashes and golden warm rebirth, though he does not recognize it until he finds it in his storybook.

His mother tells him that his imagination is bright; his father smiles at him and says nothing. Minwu learns to say nothing of what he sees.

\- - -

When he is fifteen he spends a night meditating before the Masks, as the mages of old used to do.

He looks at the White Mask and sees a book. He looks at the Black Mask and sees a mountain. He looks into his own palms and sees a darkness lit with stars.

The White Mask shows him magic. It shows him girls, dark-haired and bright-haired and soft-haired, calling forth magical beasts of legend into battle; it shows him a string of old men and sharp-eyed women spitting forth monster-spells from their own mouths. It shows him two children, hair and faces matched, calling forth one power from two souls. It shows him a young lady who knits the fabric of time; it shows him a soldier with ice in her veins. Minwu watches; Mysidia's magic is ancient and deep, and these things are unfamiliar, like things from a fairytale.

The White Mask shows him a castle, lit with bright jewels that sparkle with a terrible sharp-edged cruelty; it shows him a hedge of rosebushes, decayed and blackened, tangled with poison oak and dying; it shows him a flying city, glinting with metal; it shows him a fire brighter than any sun. Minwu watches. The eyes in the mask are hollow, but when he looks at them, he sees gemstones.

The Black Mask shows him the Tower of Mysidia over and over again.

\- - -

When he is twenty he decides to leave Mysidia.

His mother Maeda tells him he is brave and strong, and that he will do wonderful things, and he will always have a place with them whenever he is ready to come home. She tells him she understands; she tell him she will miss him; she tells him he is an honor and a joy and her happiness.

His father Ymer gives him one long hard look and says, simply, "Yes."

Minwu looks at his mother and sees a lovely flower, tall, with thorns. He looks at his father and sees clockwork.

When he looks back over his shoulder at Mysidia, he sees it surrounded by water, and a strange ship rising behind it, like a second sun emerging.

He takes the White Mask with him.

\- - -

He travels north, through the woods. Traveling is not hard for him; his magic keeps him healthy and hale and protected, and many of the creatures leave him be. It is easy enough to find nourishment in the woods, and his magic keeps him strong when he cannot. He rents a canoe from a local tradeswoman to cross the river, and continues.

He meets a few travelers on the paths – some pilgrimage to Mysidia, the city of magic and legends; others travel for trade and adventure. From them he hears the whispers of the Empire, of Palamecia. When he looks into their eyes he sees the dark sparkle of rubies on the hilt of a sharp blade.

He stops at the waterfront and looks out at the Tower of Mysidia. In its place he sees the moon, rising, and the shadow of another moon behind it; he sees the darkness of the night sky and the sharpness of stars and a bright sharp meteor falling from it like a weapon. He sees a ball of magic that burns like fire but swallows the light.

He sleeps on the shores of the lake. The next morning when he looks at the Tower in farewell he sees a giant sea snake rising from the depths.

\- - -

On this northern continent, there are bigger towns, a network of roads and ships connecting  them to each other and to the rest of the world; when Minwu looks at them on a map he sees a string of beads, glowing from within like pearls.

He makes his way through the towns slowly, using his healing to earn keep and passage. When he looks at the injured he sees sparrows with broken wings, trees with shattered limbs, walkways with crumbling stones. As they speak of war he sees shadows on the ground, like clouds moving to cover the sun.

Many ask him of Mysidia. He tells them of its forests, of the cool waters and sharp peaks of the mountains. Some ask to see sharper magics, but he has set his mother's tomes aside for the practicality of his father's art, and he does not wish to dive back into that world yet.  Instead he heals, and grant protective spells to those who wish to travel, and finds that he likes it well enough.

When he looks about Altair, he sees empty caravans, and a metal gauntlet; when he looks about Gatrea he sees fire and wind and little else.

\- - -

The first time he looks at Castle Fynn he sees nothing but its stone turrets and high arches. When he looks around the town of Fynn he sees shadows and flame and the long creeping reaches of roses, but when he looks at the castle he sees the castle. It surprises him. So few things in his eyes are only what they are.

Minwu presents himself to the King of Fynn and offers his services in exchange for lodging.

"I've heard of you," the King says. "Your talents are remarkable. We would be honored to have you stay."

When he looks at King Tycon he sees a tall proud horse with an armored rider. He tells the King he would in turn be honored to serve in Fynn for the time being and learn about their nation.

"This is my daughter, the Princess Hilda," says King Tycon.

The first time Minwu looks at Hilda he sees nothing but her, proud strength and gracious smile. Then as she curtseys, the sun erupts behind her head in a bright halo, and Minwu can see roses sprouting about her feet and climbing her slender ankles. It reminds him of his mother.

\- - -

"The Empire grows ever fiercer," young Hilda tells him.

She is writing letters: missives to the nobles of Kashuan, to the monks of Salamand, to contacts in Paloom and Poft. When he looks at the paper Minwu sees a snake devouring its own tail. When he looks in Hilda's eyes he sees the bright sparkle of sapphires on a silver shield.

"They will come for us," she tells him. "Father does not think they will, but I can see it. He has raised his armies against the Empire. Does he think they will ignore such an action?"

Minwu looks at her royal seal on the envelopes, the Wild Rose of Fynn, and he sees a pointed arrow nocked in a bow. When he looks at Hilda, all he sees is her face: brow wrinkled with worry, eyes fierce with determination.

"I will protect you," he says.

"Are you staying?" she asks, with the innocence of youth. 

Minwu looks down into his hand as if reading his palm; he sees a long scroll of parchment. "For now," he says, and smiles at her.

\- - -

When Minwu is twenty-four he saves Princess Hilda's life, although he doesn't know what he is doing at the time.

He is dining with the King and the Princess and a handful of visiting nobles. When he looks at them, he sees a team of horses, bridled and saddled. When he looks at the King he sees a dark spear in the heart of a tree. When he looks at Hilda, he sees only Hilda, but the bowl of soup before her is a nest of snakes. Hilda sees him looking, and returns a quizzical look of her own, and coughs, once.

Minwu leaps to his feet and shoves her bowl off the table - the snakes scatter, resolving into droplets of soup - and catches Hilda as she falls to the floor. 

The poison is a tricky one - fast-traveling and composite, it requires both Esuna and Basuna to lift - but it is no match for the powers of a Mysidian mage whose father casts as quickly as he breathes. Minwu layers his antidote spells with healing, and within a handful of minutes he has purged the poison from her body entirely.

That night he is too caught up in thought to sleep. The things he sees have always seemed random, meaningless, a trick of the eyes and the magic in his body. He wonders if they are all premonitions; he wonders what other omens he's seen and ignored.

\- - -

When he is twenty-five he becomes the Royal Mage of the Castle Fynn. King Tycon presents him with a medallion, gold and embossed with a word of power in an old script; when Minwu looks at it, he sees a great eagle, curled in sleep. He kneels in ceremonial prayer; his robes are white and red and leather.

When he looks at the King, he sees a spilt chalice. When he looks at Hilda, this time, he sees a dragon.

Later that night Minwu cloaks himself in magic and slips away to the secret places beneath Castle Fynn. The White Mask tingles in his hands, and when he looks into the empty hollow eyeholes of the mask, he sees water at the bottom of a well.

He carefully places the White Mask into a chest and seals it.

\- - -

His daily duties are quite minor: no one in Fynn is interested in following magical instruction past the first page of the tome, so Minwu spends most of his time caring for injuries and illness that are brought before him, and working with Princess Hilda. 

King Tycon is a well-loved king, and bold in his defiance of the Empire, but it is Hilda to whom Minwu's eyes are drawn time and time again. She is a sharp-edged blade and a well-cut crystal and an intricately entwined staff. When he looks at her he sees lightning. He still does not know what he sees, or why. 

Minwu sets the broken leg of a travelling courtier, heals the marsh-fever of a visiting dignitary. They ask how he likes Fynn; he simply smiles.

\- - -

Hilda's letters become darker; the responses she recieves are weighty. She shares some of them with Minwu; he looks at the papers and sees spelltomes and flypaper.

"I am making plans," Hilda tells him, "because my father cannot. He must stay strong in his belief that Fynn is powerful enough to repel the Empire, for if he loses that faith in public, our people will lose their wills to fight. So he continues to believe that we are safe, and I make plans in the shadows in case we are not, and we both hope that Fynn never needs my help."

She is somewhere in her teens; Minwu cannot tell her age, for every time he looks at her now she gleams deep red like a rose-petal made of garnets. She never asks how long he will stay in Fynn; neither does her father. Minwu wears their medallion about his neck and continues to offer help where he can, and finds himself content.

He looks at the throne and sees a stormcloud. He looks out his window and sees the Tower of Mysidia. When he looks at his hands he sees a stream of light and magic, life-green and holy-white:  flowing through his veins, pooled between his palms.

\- - -

When he is thirty Princess Hilda asks him to save her life again. 

"It is just a feeling," she says, "but I trust my instincts above all else." She tells him of silences in the castle, open spaces that suddenly seem too open, the feeling of a shadow following her. "It has been growing; it will be soon," she says. "I cannot tell my father; either he will think I exaggerate to make my point, or he will over-react and take away the freedoms I need to be useful."

So Minwu comes to her chambers at night and cloaks her with magical shields: Protect, Shell, Wall, Barrier. He cloaks himself in Blink and weaves Fog and Slow about the room. They do this for three nights; on the fourth, they catch an assassin bearing a horrible jagged knife.

"They didn't tell me you'd taken a lover," she spits, before biting down on poison. Minwu moves to revive her so that they can get answers; Princess Hilda stills his hands.

"I would not have my father know," she tells him gently, and so instead he helps her deliver the body to someone loyal in Altair, someone she trusts. Minwu looks at the knife he holds and sees an emptiness that glitters like gold.

Minwu cannot help but ask. "Lover?"

Hilda's shrug is the dismissal of a princess who answers to no one. "They may think what they like," she says, although she smiles at him as she says it. "Your presence saved my life."

Minwu thinks about it, and finds he doesn't much care. When he looks at Hilda's smile, all he sees is the sparkle in her eyes.

\- - -

He eventually tells King Tycon and Princess Hilda of the Masks, and the Crystal Rod, and the powers Mysidia keeps careful watch over.

"We must hide that secret," Hilda tells him, and King Tycon defers. Hilda takes Minwu aside and shows him maps: the Empire is moving; they are _searching_. Minwu looks at her and sees her hands working sigils she doesn't know. "If the Empire finds out, they will stop at nothing to obtain such a powerful spell, and we will all be destroyed."

He writes a letter to his mother Maeda.

Weeks later a reply comes by raven; he holds the letter in his hands and sees a threaded needle. His mother tells him that she has taken care of the Black Mask, and that she and his father are well, and that she loves him very much.

\- - -

"I need you," Princess Hilda tells him, and he comes.

She has purchased a safe house in Fynn. She tells him that it is only if the worst were to happen - she does not want to need it, but she intends to be prepared. Her face is set, her voice flat. When he looks out the window he sees a burning fire, like a meteor, streaking through the sky.

"I cannot ward a building like this," Minwu tells her. It is too large - the outside is unassuming, but it connects into other buildings to make a space large enough for refugees - and his defensive spells will find no purchase in something that sees so much daily traffic. "But there is something else I can do."

He lays the foundation of the recovery circle carefully, aligning it so that if that dark day does come, he will have a well of magical reserve deep enough to aid him. When he looks up at Hilda, her face is wearing the cool approval of a queen. It takes him a handful of breaths to realize she is not truly wearing the golden crown he sees upon her brow. He wonders whether her father knows of this place.

\- - -

There is a winter of illness. Hilda seems to think it a sign; Minwu travels from home to home in Fynn, healing what he can. When he looks at the sick he sees glittering green emeralds and lit candles. When he looks out into the snow he sees ash as if from a bonfire. He heals wounds and purifies flesh, and when the villagers thank him, in their smiles he sees the working of a spinning wheel.

From Fynn he goes to Altair, then to Gatrea. Hilda accompanies him; she is fierce in her youth and older than she seems, and when Minwu looks at her huddled in her furs and pouring water for the ill, he sees a golden crown and a silver scepter and a necklace shaped like a falcon's claw.

Winter turns to spring and King Tycon has a fete to honor those who have passed and recognize the work done to help the suffering. There are wreaths made of laurel and ivy. When Hilda approaches him to place one on his head, Minwu sees bright birds fly from her hands, as red as the phoenix, as red as roses, as red as blood and fire.

\- - -

The Empire comes.

Fynn burns.

Minwu wraps himself and Hilda in spells. The King has asked her to get as many out of the castle as possible whilst he leads the defense, and Minwu stands by her side and works: he casts himself to exhaustion and then swallows the things Hilda gives him and casts again, over and over, until he is weary as stone with it. At the edges of his vision he can see words and sentences flitting about, and the glyphs for spells glow sharply as if embossed onto the walls. The people he and Hilda manage to protect glow like sunset as they slip away from the flames and the destruction. 

King Tycon suffers a grave wound. The few men they have carry him to Altair, to the building Hilda bought months ago in secrecy, fearing the worst. Minwu puts his liege into a bed; draws strength from the recovery circle, heals him again. When he looks at the King's face he sees a crescent moon and a pen without ink and an empty hourglass.

"I did not want this," Hilda says softly. She is bent over the still form of her father, grasping his hand. "I had hoped I would be wrong."

A rose lays beside King Tycon on his pillow. Minwu looks at Hilda and sees a curved dagger. He looks at the King and sees a tall evergreen. He looks at the rose; it remains a rose.

"We must rebel." Hilda looks up at him. "The Empire will destroy everything if we do not fight."

"I will help you," Minwu says.

\- - -

Altair gathers the refugees from Fynn in secret.

There are not so many injured, with them; they were unable to save enough, and many remain in Fynn itself, under the martial law of the Empire. In this room there are three bodies on the floor; they are still breathing, but so very slow, as if they are about to fall off a precipice. The circle glows gently around them, and Minwu feels its reservoir slowly pressing at his mind, ready and willing.

Minwu invokes his magic, calls them forth, heals their wounds and soothes their burns.

One of the men from the town tells him their names. When he looks at Firion he sees a wildcat cub. When he looks at Maria he sees a sapling. When he looks at Guy he sees uncarved stone.

He leaves them within the recovery circle, moves onward to the next room whilst Hilda speaks of strategy.

\- - -

At the end of the day he finds Hilda alone, standing beside the chair they've made a throne, her head bent. He cannot decide whether she is young or old; when he looks at her he sees her face, lined with exhaustion and grief, lit from beneath with fierce determination and bright intellect and righteous anger. He looks at Hilda and only sees Hilda.

"It's time," Hilda tells him. "I thank you for your help, for everything you have done for us, for Fynn, for all of the years you have been with us, but I need to know. I must ask you the question my father would not ask, because I cannot continue forward without – without knowing. I trust no one like I do you, and yet I have to ask." Her voice only trembles the once, and she looks up at him and squares her shoulders. "Will you stay?"

She holds out her hands. In her palms is a rose. Minwu has to reach out and take it to know that it's real.

He says, simply, "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> Notes for readers:  
> \- I'm unaware of any canonical ages, and I also dislike FF's "you're an old hero at 18 and by 21 you're ancient" thing, so I hope that my choice of age timeline works.  
> \- Feel free to play "catch the vague crossover reference" if you're bored  
> \- I would apologize for gratuitous use of imagery and metaphor but I'm really not sorry
> 
> Notes for estirose:  
> \- I absolutely loved all of your prompts - I was so happy to see another small fandom fan! - and had hoped to fill three of them, but of course, ended up too busy to do so (but pay attention during the Chocobo Races because I may take another look then). I hope this works for your prompt! I was really pleased to get to fill in some backstory in FFII. I love both Minwu and Hilda.


End file.
